


Scars

by wordbending



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: F/F, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Nudity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-04
Updated: 2018-08-04
Packaged: 2019-06-21 19:40:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15565017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wordbending/pseuds/wordbending
Summary: There are few gestures more intimate than to trace your hands along another's scars, wounds both ancient and new, and reminisce.





	Scars

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the [nonsexual acts of intimacy](http://wordbending.tumblr.com/post/174951682722/nonsexual-acts-of-intimacy-select-from-the) meme - taking a bath together.

A woman stands in front of a nondescript door. She’s covered in motorcycle oil, from the curve of her breasts to the tips of her boots, but she doesn’t see her motorcycle. She doesn’t remember driving it to where she is now. She doesn’t even know where she is in the first place - all her memories are foggy, unfocused.

She hesitates for just a moment before opening the door. When she does, all she sees on the other side is a bathtub in a dark room.

She takes another look at the motorcycle oil over her body before entering the room. When in Rome, they say.

She takes her motorcycle goggles off her neck, shakes her hair loose before removing her bra. She steps out of her jumpsuit - a certain kind of person would say she does so with the ease of an experienced lover  - and reaches down, turning the faucets of the bath.

When she climbs in, there is someone already waiting there, at the entrance to the door, which was once so close but now almost seems to be too far away. It’s a woman, with a gaze like cold steel, but a smile that almost makes you want to believe in her even as she constricts you, crushes you.

The first woman isn’t ashamed of her nudity, but she’s momentarily surprised by the visitor. It seems impossible for her to be there, and yet, at the same time, so natural, so expected, as if it was all according to a grand design. She can’t put her finger on why, but neither can she bring herself to protest.

As the other woman crosses the room, she sheds her own jumpsuit before crawling into the bath, slithering up against the first woman’s body. She lets herself settle into the water, resting her head against the woman’s shoulder.

Neither woman says anything, but the first traces her fingers over the other’s arms, over the thick, powerful muscles... but also over the scars criss-crossing along her skin.

“Boss,” she whispers. Her tone isn’t one of concern - it’s of curiosity. “These scars… where did you get them?”

The woman known as ‘Boss’ smiles. She slips her free hand over the other woman’s, tracing the scars alongside her. “Each of these scars is a powerful, permanent memory - a shrine to a battle.” She stops at one of the scars, an ugly, jagged wound. “An enemy soldier turned around just before I could slit his throat. I stabbed him in the heart, but he clung to life. In his final, desperate struggle, he thrust his bayonet into my arm.”

She moves downwards to another scar, a pinkish line crossing the skin. The skin is bumpy and uneven there, like boiling water. “A bullet, while I and my fellow Cobras were on the front lines in Algeria. A lucky hit - it only grazed me. I killed twenty-seven men altogether... yet that was the only scar I received.”  

‘Boss’ traces their hands downward to near her wrist, where there is yet another scar, short in length. Her smile becomes softer. “My protégé. We were training in the art of CQC. I had him pinned to the floor, but I got too careless - I let him escape and he nicked my arm with his knife.”

The first woman laughs softly. “That’s a little hard to believe. You, careless?”

“Yes. Or, perhaps, too soft. It was not a mistake I’d make again.”

This time, the first woman moves her hand downwards, taking both their hands over the other woman’s stomach. She gently curves her fingers over a very long, jagged scar, covered in stitches, that crosses over one of her breasts and down past her abdomen.

“And this?” she whispers. “Was this carelessness too?”

“Yes,” ‘Boss’ says firmly, her fingers tensing against the scar. “But I did not take a life for this - it was life that was taken from me.”

The first woman slowly slides her hands back up the long scar, until she stops just below the other woman’s breasts. There is no scar there, but a violent wound - the gaping, blood-red hole of a bullet entering bare skin.

“Boss,” says the first woman. “Tell me: what’s the story of this one?”

The woman known as ‘Boss’ does not respond. Instead, her hand snaps out suddenly, and she grabs the first woman’s wrist, turning her arm around. When she does, she reveals them - the purple, tumor-like flesh jutting from the woman’s skin, crossing up and down her arms in the shape of lightning bolts.

“And what is your story?” she says.

“Torture,” the first woman responds, as if nothing has happened. She laughs, a soft chuckle.

“What is it that’s so amusing?”

“It’s just that… as a spy… it’s my job to not get discovered. And I wasn’t. Honestly, my disguise wasn’t even that good.” She takes one hand and puts her hair into a makeshift ponytail, then raises the other to her face and mimes putting on a pair of glasses, before letting the ‘disguise’ fall. “But I was tortured anyway. Just because he felt like it. That’s what’s funny about it.”

“I’m sorry,” says the woman known as ‘Boss.’

The first woman blinks in surprise. “ _You’re_ sorry?”

“I am. I should have kept you safe from harm. It was my fault.”

“You don’t need to apologize to me,” the first woman says. She lowers her head to the other woman’s neck, plants a kiss there. “I should have protected _you.”_

The moment she says that, she opens her eyes and finds herself somewhere else. She can feel the warmth of a crackling fire, its embers starting to die. Beneath her bare skin is the fur of a tigerskin rug. A set of naked, muscular arms hugs her tightly, as if afraid she’ll escape - she doesn’t even have to look to know it’s not The Boss, but Snake. His face is still flushed.

She does escape from his grip, and easily. She only looks down at his sleeping form for a moment, an instant of guilt, before she finds his discarded uniform and takes the forbidden fruit from him. He doesn’t so much as stir as she puts her jumpsuit back on, throws on a leather jacket, and slips the Philosophers’ Legacy into her pocket.

When she does, she feels the photograph there, the one she took of Snake with her hidden camera. It feels foolish, overly sentimental, and it goes against a lifetime of training, but at the same time, she feels like she owes it to him. Maybe she, too, is getting soft.

She takes out her lipstick, applies it, and then kisses the back of the photograph. Using the lipstick, she writes “Goodbye” underneath in pink cursive.

But that’s not enough. Maybe it’s the guilt talking, but in spite of everything he did, everything she’s lost because of him, she knows she still owes him more of an explanation than that.

So, into a reel of tape, she begins, “Scholars tell us that the first spy in history was the snake in the Book of Genesis… but this time around, it was I who tempted the snake.”

Once she’s finished her final message, she finds herself standing in front of a nondescript door, the Philosophers’ Legacy heavy in her pocket. She takes one last look at the sleeping body on the ground, at the man who killed The Boss. But then she opens the door, walks through it, and is gone.

She thinks of The Boss again when she gets on her motorcycle, daydreaming of The Boss riding it with her, her strong arms wrapped around her waist. It’s a daydream she’s had many times, although not always with a motorcycle. She wonders what The Boss would say to her, if they could ride away together.

“I’m not a fan of these,” probably.

And she’d reply, “That’s right - you like horses. I was never that fond of them, not even when I was a little girl. I’ve been on a bike since the day I could walk.”

The Boss would say something like, “You can’t trust a machine. A horse is the perfect soldier - stubborn. Strong-willed. Loyal to itself, to its nature, but nonetheless a willing, capable partner. There’s no other animal like it.”

And she’d laugh and say, “You aren’t just scared of motorcycles, are you?”

And, perhaps, just maybe, The Boss would laugh back and say “No.”

She doesn’t have a tendency towards mourning. She’s someone who is constantly aware of her emotions, her inner feelings, and she’s been trained to resist even the worst of tortures. But as she revs up her motorcycle, she is surprised to feel something wet on her cheek all the same. It almost makes her laugh - what a cliché, she thinks. The spy who sheds a single tear.

Maybe she should even salute.

But she puts those thoughts aside, wiping the tear from her eye, and finally drives off into the bright orange sunrise.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to Ivy and Holly on Twitter for betaing this fic for me!


End file.
